Until Gray Light
by ShonenAiSorcerer
Summary: Another sleepless night when assassins cross paths. Y / A


Notes: A brief tribute to insomnia with a little shounen ai thrown in for fun.

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Until Gray Light

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"Don't you sleep?"

The question slipped from his lips before he thought it through, the situation, not the question. Talking to Aya was hazardous at the best of times, talking to Aya in the middle of the night while half drunk could only lead to disaster.

To be fair, though, it was almost three in the morning, an hour that belonged to the slightly intoxicated and their stumbling attempts to find their own beds or suitable, preferably horizontal replacements. But Aya hadn't been in his way. Aya hadn't been glaring at him or damning him for coming home smelling of expensive beer and cheap perfume. Aya hadn't even been paying attention.

And yet Yohji had felt the need to talk.

Purple eyes, dark in the meager light of the distant reading lamp, turned towards him from across the room. But they didn't stay long enough to accuse. Sitting in the window seat, his back to one side and his knees bent to accommodate his long legs so his bare feet could rest against the other, Aya just shifted the mug in his hands and looked away again.

But Yohji couldn't leave well enough alone.

"Aya?"

They ran into each other often enough, Yohji going out and Aya going upstairs to practice his katas. Yohji coming home early and Aya going out for a midnight run. Yohji coming in and Aya sitting in the not-quite-dark. The ritual was encased in silence; it wasn't particularly dignified, and if they spoke they might have to acknowledge all the little details they were trying to ignore: the stains on Yohji's jeans, Aya's sweat-soaked hair, bruises, trembling hands, and dark circles under their eyes.

He knew Aya didn't want to talk to him, just as well as he knew that should he pass out on the floor, the redhead would leave him there to sleep it off without so much as an attempt to wake him. And in reciprocation, if Aya happened to fall asleep in the chair or at the window, Yohji would never stop to adjust his head or toss the light throw over him. Things like that meant they had to acknowledge what the other was doing. They didn't want that.

Aya was allowed to lock the door when the other forgot, and after he made tea, Yohji could use the leftover hot water for some instant coffee.

They could sit in the living room together and stare at the blank television screen, maybe even watch either other through its glassy face.

But they didn't speak.

"Aya?"

To speak was to break the spell of mutual exclusivity. If they exchanged words, the Yohji who went out in his perfectly styled, perfectly fuckable became one in the same with the wrinkled, fucked Yohji who came home in need of a smoke and a shower. And maybe Aya had even more to lose. Fearless, cold, untouchable Aya was not, would not be, the same man who fought bad dreams, who cried out in the night, who couldn't get more than a few hours rest unless he was physically exhausted.

Yohji had theories. He had theories about Aya's dreams, and theories about how to stop them. He even had theories, or maybe they were fantasies, that Aya would be more bearable if he got more rest. He definitely had fantasies about better ways to exhaust that sleek, pale body that sought oblivion in hundreds of repetitive swings of a sword or unknown miles of night-dark road.

He wondered if Aya had theories.

"What are you doing?"

Yohji wondered, twisting his thoughts around his theories, what Aya did in the in between time. They didn't meet every night, not like this. Sometimes there were missions; sometimes they were easy, and they came back early to go their own ways. Aya slept those nights, or at least staid in his room, mostly quiet. Other times, when they all came home in the growing light of dawn, silently divvying out turns in the single shower by who wore the most blood or needed the most care, they all slept. Silently. Like the dead.

Did Aya look forward to those nights?

And what about the other nights? Sometimes Yohji didn't go out. He had heard things through their shared wall, moving, pacing, tossing…crying? He could never be sure of the last. Aya's door would open and close, his steps would be soft on the stairs, and the kettle would whistle, just a second, before he snatched it off the heat of the stove.

"Why are you down here?"

Sometimes he turned on all the lights. Catching that was all about timing, but that was all about chance. Though he had stepped into the bright room a few times, only once had Yohji seen it take place, when, staying in, he had been forced downstairs by his own unpleasant dreams. Maybe that's how he knew, how he could read the expression on Aya's pallid face as he hurried down the steps in nothing but a pair of black pants, more disordered than the blonde had ever seen him. He knew each move as Aya switched on the lights, one by one, until the shadows were gone from the far corners of the room.

They had stood there a long time, Yohji in his boxers and clutching a bottle of scotch for which he hadn't brought a glass, and Aya, wide-eyed and panting, hand still on the light switch.

But they hadn't said anything.

"Couldn't sleep?"

That night, Aya had looked around, calmed, then turned the overhead lights back off. Then the big lamp. He left the reading light. He always left it.

Yohji wondered how often he did that.

He hadn't asked, just taken his scotch and sat on the sofa, drinking while he listened to Aya make tea. Always tea.

He guessed Aya didn't need coffee. Not at night.

It surprised him, really, that the man didn't drink it more during the day. He couldn't be getting proper rest, not when they met so often at night. True they shared hours, but Yohji went away to sleep until noon or one or whenever daytime Aya decided to shove him out of bed. And Aya?

Aya went at the first gray signs of day, fleeing like a vampire after washing his cup at the sink, readying it for the first official cup of tea that Yohji rarely saw prepared.

Did Aya nap?

"Hey…Aya…"

Was he tired?

"Aya…"

Was he lonely?

"Aya…do you want to come upstairs with me?"

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~end?~

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Notes: To promote further experiments in not-sleeping, review, please?


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